For many people, New Orleans is practically synonymous with jazz; it's
the birthplace of both the music and many of its leading lights, from Louis Armstrong to Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. But now, one organization is working to draw attention to the city's history of opera music.

OperaCréole, an opera company founded in New Orleans, is resurrecting
music written by local composers of color and others who've been left
out of the overwhelmingly white, male canon. The company's latest
production, La Flamenca, is by the Creole composer Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert, whose father was born in New Orleans.

OperaCréole founder and mezzo-soprano Givonna Joseph joined NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro to discuss La Flamenca and her company's work in general. Hear their full conversation at the audio link.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro: So tell us about this composer, Lucien-Léon Lambert.Givonna Joseph: He
was born in Paris; his father was a 19th-century New Orleans free
composer of color. His father, Charles, performed and wrote music here
as well as South America, and landed in Paris, where he married a
Parisian. And Lucien was born there. He had the pleasure of studying
with one of the great French composers, Jules Massenet. And in 1903, Massenet opened the French opera season in Paris with a production of Hérodiade, and 10 days later his student debuted his opera, La Flamenca.
And it has been essentially not performed anywhere since 1903, that I
have been able to find — certainly not in America. And we were lucky
enough to bring it home.

La Flamenca is set in Cuba during the
Spanish-American war. There's a unique heroine faced with a very
dramatic dilemma: a conflict between desire and country.[In
one scene, the main characters] are talking about the conflict between
the love for each other and her determination to fight for the
independence of Cuba. She says, "I am a Creole and you are a Spanish
officer, and we should be enemies." And, of course, they find great love
with each other, and so she has to try to negotiate the independence of
her country — continuing to be politically involved in that — and this
love relationship.Can you hear evidence of Lambert's Creole heritage in this work?Well,
the Creole heritage in 19th-century New Orleans was very much a French
heritage. They all spoke French, his father would have spoken French,
and so it's natural that he would have written it in French. And New
Orleans is the first city of opera — we hear about the birth of jazz,
but the first opera performed in America was performed here in 1796. ...
And from that point on, until about 1919, we had about five opera
houses. In those opera houses, free men of color were in the orchestras.

You hear some of the infusion of the flamenco style of music —
that is also part of New Orleans' heritage. We were such a great city
where all people can come from their native land and bring their culture
with them, and their culture would survive. So you hear some of that in
the music that he infuses with French grand opera.You've
said that works by composers of color are "hidden on purpose." What did
you mean by that, and why is it important to bring works like this to
audiences now?Well, the opera audience is a very
diverse audience. When I said it was hidden on purpose — historically is
what I mean, not currently. But historically, we have evidence of
composers all the way back to Mozart's time — le Chevalier de
Saint-Georges, upon his death, someone did burn some of his music.
Luckily, some things did survive, and we have finally found them and
people around the country are enjoying that music. But historically it's
been an issue, keeping that part of who we are suppressed.

I
had to grow up with people saying, "Well, black people don't really do
that." And at the age of 15, when I started studying voice and my voice
teacher, Charles Paddock, who taught at Loyola, was encouraging me to do
this ... I did not know the wealth of information that was just not
there for most of us to find. And so we didn't really know what our
heritage was in terms of opera and hundreds of years' worth of classical
music.

I'm curious about the wider world of opera —
have you seen the same embrace of this history of musicians of color
actually influencing something like the Met, for example?I would like to say that I see a lot of it. There has been some changes in terms of new composers like Terence Blanchard's
work being done — New Orleans Opera will present his work next spring.
But unfortunately, I just don't see enough of it happening. Great
composers like William Grant Still — still not getting his due on the
main opera stage. I think [there's] still work to be done in that
department.

Comment by email:

Thank you John and Bill for posting it. It has been a great two weeks for OperaCreole. Especially as we celebrate 6 years! I'll have video of La Flamenca up soon. Givonna Givonna Joseph